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The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness,
tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood
by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the
detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid
the trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing
through the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya
held his horse by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to
mount. His face, having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow,
and his eyes were particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down
his spine and his whole body pulsed rhythmically.
"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing
the horses."
The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack
because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted.
Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as
if to nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious
of his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting
in the darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.
"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please...
for God's sake...!" said he.
Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He
turned to glance at him.
"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to
obey me and not shove yourself forward anywhere."
He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all
the way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably
growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with
the esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they
had all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the
hill. Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended
with their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov,
the pulsation of his body constantly increasing. It was getting
lighter and lighter, but the mist still hid distant objects. Having
reached the valley, Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack
beside him.
"The signal!" said he.
The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant
the tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from
various sides, and then more shots.
At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya
lashed his horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not
heeding Denisov who shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at
the moment the shot was fired it suddenly became as bright as
noon. He galloped to the bridge. Cossacks were galloping along
the road in front of him. On the bridge he collided with a Cossack
who had fallen behind, but he galloped on. In front of him soldiers,
probably Frenchmen, were running from right to left across the
road. One of them fell in the mud under his horse's feet.
Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From
the midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped
up, and the first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling
jaw of a Frenchman, clutching the handle of a lance that had been
aimed at him.
"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving
rein to his excited horse he galloped forward along the village
street.
He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and
ragged Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides
of the road, were shouting something loudly and incoherently.
A gallant-looking Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and
with a frowning red face, had been defending himself against the
hussars. When Petya galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen.
"Too late again!" flashed through Petya's mind and he
galloped on to the place from which the rapid firing could be
heard. The shots came from the yard of the landowner's house he
had visited the night before with Dolokhov. The French were making
a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden thickly overgrown
with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who crowded at the
gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the gate, Petya saw
Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint, shouting to
his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed
as Petya rode up to him.
"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without
pausing a moment galloped to the place whence came the sounds
of firing and where the smoke was thickest.
A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while
others plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped
after Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering
smoke some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of
the bushes to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill
toward the pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but
instead of holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly
and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his
saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering
in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily
on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs
jerked rapidly though his head was quite motionless. A bullet
had pierced his skull.
After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out
of the house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced
that they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya,
who lay motionless with outstretched arms.
"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the
gate to meet Denisov who was riding toward him.
"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance
the unmistakably lifeless attitude- very familiar to him- in which
Petya's body was lying.
"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance
of these words afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to
the prisoners, who were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried
up. "We won't take them!" he called out to Denisov.
Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and
with trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained, mud-bespattered
face which had already gone white.
"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones...
take them all!" he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks
looked round in surprise at the sound, like the yelp of a dog,
with which Denisov turned away, walked to the wattle fence, and
seized hold of it.
Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov
was Pierre Bezukhov.
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